Grief
by geniusalias
Summary: Sansa experiences to five stages of grief after Sandor's death. Short and sad.


Grief

Denial came naturally to her; he'd always called her a little bird that loved to sing sweet lies. And so she sang to herself, rocking back and forth, clutching her chest, alone in her tower. In her songs, knights with scarred skin but unblemished honor rode to freedom with sparrows on their shoulders. Dogs and direwolves ran side by side, in lands where lions would never find them. Her dreams were not as sweet as her songs.

In her sleep, she saw his face pressed into the fire that had burned him. But as he screamed, the flames turned into her hair, blazing against his cheek. She opened her mouth, but all she could do was sing. Her tears hissed as they dropped into the inferno, and she awoke to find they'd wetted her pillow.

The nightmares made it harder to forget, so she simply stopped sleeping. Eating interfered with her singing, so she refrained from that as well. At first her maids had insisted she take better care of herself, but now they only whispered to each other about the mad Stark girl who couldn't stop singing. She could stop, though, and would soon. She just needed to stay in her beautiful lie a bit longer.

Anger was not as ladylike as denial, but its arising was inevitable. When the King's Hand came to console her, she knew the time for fantasies was over. She could not hide from the truth, but she could curse it.

"I understand The Hound- sorry, Ser Clegane's death was upsetting, my lady. The Queen tells me the two of you were… close."

"You understand nothing." She spat, her grief surfacing anew. "And he wore the title 'Hound' proudly. You dishonor him to strip him of it in death."

"I know he was your lover." Tyrion was blunt, but not unkind. His mismatched eyes looked on her with sympathy. "He is with the gods now."

Sansa spit on the gods, as she spit on her songs. "The gods have had plenty of company, as of late. Were my father and sister not enough for them?" She found the tears would not come. Perhaps she'd shed them all in her dreams. Or perhaps her wrath was too hot for something as cool as water against her cheek.

"I am sorry." The dwarf tried to touch her, but she jerked away violently. He bowed, resigned, before leaving her with some final words. "If there were anything I could do…"

She listened to his footsteps as they echoed down the hall. "There is nothing anyone can do." She whispered, her voice thick with hatred. Or wasn't there? Suddenly, she was flying for the godswood, longing for the wings that other birds had. Her feet raced over the cobblestones as her mind raced over the words to her prayers. She collapsed beneath the heart tree, and tried not to notice the Lannister crimson of its eyes. Tyrion had been right; her knight was with the gods now. But if the gods could take him away, they could bring him. Couldn't they?

"Please." She repeated the word until her voice was raw from begging. "You've taken everything else. You can take me, too. Just bring him back."

The bargaining was as fleeting as her anger had been, and her songs before it. It was the sadness that lasted, like the smell of smoke lingering after a fire. The depression sank into her bones, making her feel as heavy as her heart. Her nightmares no longer plagued her, and now her sleep was as empty as her waking hours. She tried to take solace in it, sleeping for days at a time, though she was still somehow tired when she awoke.

The King had little patience for her despair. "Honestly, did you weep like this when your other mutt died? Duchess, was it? Or something insipid of the like." Jofferey was the one who'd put both dogs to death. "Anyway, mother says if you're to be Queen you mustn't sulk so over lost pets." Sansa was too exhausted to glare. She just looked on him with lifeless eyes, wishing he would go away. "Don't you understand? The Hound bit his master! He had to be put down!" Jofferey was annoyed by Sansa's impassiveness. "It was your fault, you know. He was defending you." He said petulantly, before leaving her alone with her guilt.

Jofferey was right; she spent her few waking hours reliving that day, over and over, and she knew she was to blame for his death. His fate had been sealed the moment he'd first laid eyes on her. From the time she first sang to him, from the night he'd drunkenly confused his love, from the disheveled rose he'd presented her with at the last tourney, from the fleeting kisses in empty corridors. Just as Sandor was doomed to love her, he was doomed to die.

She would have gladly taken the hit, as many as Jofferey could have thrown, if it would have saved him. But the sting of the blow never reached her cheek; instead, the King received a mailed punch against his jaw. And another. And another. Before Sansa could relish in her relief, the Hound was being dragged away from the broken boy, and slaughtered by his command. Moon Boy jested that the Hound had gone rabid, but Jofferey and Sansa both knew that that wasn't true.

She had killed him. She had loved him, and she had killed him. If this was acceptance, she had no taste for it. She found her mourning had brought her to the tower. She hadn't visited it since the day Jofferey had forced her to look upon Sandor's severed head, just as he had forced her to look upon her father's. The spike still held him there, his flesh so rotten that she could no longer tell where his scar had been. Sansa walked past him, willing herself not to wretch, and climbed onto the tower ledge. Balancing between two crenellations, she looked down on the city below. She remembered the first time Jofferey had brought her here, and how she had longed to shove him from the edge. Now her loathing was within her, eating her from the inside, like a parasite.

She slipped one shoe from her foot and watched it tumble to the earth. "Little bird thinks she can fly." She whispered, remembering the time he'd caught her from falling down the stairs. "Maybe I can."


End file.
